Samira Gasimli, the wife of imprisoned Azerbaijani opposition politician Azar Gasimli has claimed to have been barred from leaving the country to participate in a conference in Europe. She later discovered that she was placed under a travel ban in relation to the case in which her husband was sentenced.
Gasimli stated on social media that she was accused of defamation by Gurbanali Yusifov, who successfully sued her husband for defamation.
Yusifov had claimed that Azar Gasimli threatened him for money. This resulted in Azar Gasimli’s arrest in December 2024 and sentencing in March 2026 to 12 years in prison.
Aytan Farhadova
Samira Gasimli told OC Media that she has not yet received formal charges and that she did not know why she was being accused of defamation.
‘I think that this complaint is pressure from the authorities against me’, she said. ‘They’ll likely use this as a pretext to initiate legal proceedings and ban me from leaving the country’.
However, Gasimli said the authorities could not legally bar her from leaving the country as she has yet to be formally charged.
‘And I don’t know under what article or on what grounds the Interior Ministry imposed this ban on me. I have no information about any court ruling or other case brought against me, so this is completely illegal’.
Gasimli said that she will contact the Interior Ministry and the Baku Main Police Department via email to inquire about the case and the basis on which she was barred from leaving Azerbaijan.
Gasimli also linked the travel ban to her human rights work and campaigns calling for the release of her husband and others.
‘As a family member of a political prisoner, I would directly disclose information about the situation of the families of political prisoners’, Gasimli told OC Media, adding: ‘I don’t want to go into detail about where I was going, but I want to say that the purpose of my trip was the issue of political prisoners and the issue of the families of political prisoners’.
‘I stressed this at all my meetings: today, the lives of political prisoners held in extremely poor conditions are at stake, as is their safety. There has already been a death, such as that of activist Elbayi Karimli. Avaz Zeynalli was previously released from prison in poor condition with an incurable disease’.
Karimli, an activist, was arrested in August 2023 for spraying the name ‘Stalin’ on a statue of former President Heydar Aliyev. He was found dead in prison in December 2025, with the Justice Ministry claiming he had taken his own life.
Zeynalli, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Khural, was originally arrested in September 2022 and was sentenced to nine years in prison on the charges of accepting and facilitating bribery.
He was released due to health issues in April 2025 after being diagnosed with a form of cancer. He is still undergoing treatment.
Gasimli also stated that the co-founder of the independent media outlet Toplum TV Alasgar Mammadli also suffers from a very serious illness, but was still under detention.
She stressed that the authorities are responsible for prisoners’ lives and welfare, but that ‘these criminals don’t understand that responsibility’.
‘That’s why I’m raising this issue at this meeting with everyone, because today, for me personally, the health and wellbeing of a political prisoner’s family is a matter of my life, and the lives of my friends who are in prison’.
Gasimli told OC Media that she has not had any contact with Yusifov since ‘this fabricated’ criminal case was opened against her husband.
‘I only met him in person in court, and even there I didn’t speak to him, didn’t even say hello. He’s implicated in a fabricated criminal case against Azar Gasimli, in collusion with the authorities, and I can say it against him. I’m sure that this is the only phrase that was used against me, and this phrase couldn’t be considered an insult’.
